


timeless

by joatlas



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Domestic, Episode : s5e6 Timeless, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nightmares, One Shot, timeless but make it gay, very short but listen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23918152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joatlas/pseuds/joatlas
Relationships: Chakotay/Harry Kim
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14
Collections: Starfleet Gang





	timeless

The freezing cold wind slams against Chakotay’s body, infiltrating every fold of his protective suit. The snow crunches under his feet and, behind him, close, crunches under the drawing, always a tad nonchalant, walk of Harry. 

The silhouette of Voyager glimmers in front of their eyes, half stuck in the snow. A few dozens of meters away, Chakotay feels compelled to stop and to stare at it. He has lost any will to cry about it a long time ago, but still he feels his gut racking, seeing her shiny metal, her familiar shape. 

“Wow. Feels weird to see her.”, Harry shivers, just behind him. 

Harry often said what went through him even if it was not necessary. A good attribute to have, according to a quiet man like Chakotay. 

“Yeah.”

He answers and starts to walk again immediately. Drive away the thought, forget it. See only bodies and do not see them. They’re gone. Just the bodies. 

Suddenly, he hears a sudden crack, behind him, and turns right away. Harry is gone. 

“Harry?”

No answer. He runs a few meters.

“HARRY?!”

Suddenly, he stops. In front of him, a giant hole in the snow. At the bottom, the disordered shape of Harry’s limbs, the snow slowly starting to turn red around him, encircling him. 

Chakotay does not scream, or cry even. He falls on the snow, on his knees. Everything is numb. 

Everything is black. 

He feels a hand touching his face, lightly at first, then giving him a small slap. Jolts up. In bed. Dark purple sheets. Walls, only faintly familiar. View of the city. 

“Where am I?”, he asks drowsily, still not moving his head enough to see who woke him up.  
“Home. Are you okay? You screamed my name in your sleep. Not in a good way.”

Chakotay finally turns to see Harry, his mid-length hair disheveled, his lips slightly parted from worry. He always had a word of humour even if it was absolutely not the moment. He slowly reaches to touch his cheek with the tips of his fingers. He’s not dead. A nightmare and nothing more. They were becoming more and more frequent the more they were getting close to pinpointing the ship’s location and going on an expedition. He was home and fine. Home and fine. Had he been home and fine, really, since that day aboard the ship?

“I saw Voyager. We were standing there, right in front of her.”  
“Well that for sure was a dream.” 

Harry sighs and sits, his back against the headboard. 

“You died.”, Chakotay swallows.  
“How, this time?”  
“Fell in a giant hole.”  
“Well that’s better than that time I drowned. Or that one where a rock chopped off my legs.”, the ensign shrugs. 

Chakotay turns and takes Harry’s hand, enclosing it in both of his. 

“You’re all I have left. If it happened, I don’t know what I… ”

He knew he had to go on. Continue the work. Save the crew. But ten years. Hope dwindles in ten years, whatever your faith or will, hope fades. He might’ve given up long ago if it had not been Harry and him. Whenever he lost motivation, he was there to comfort him, and all the nights the ensign cried while failing a new experiment in the tech room they had specifically built in their apartment, he held him until his shirt was stained with tears. 

“You would continue. Find Voyager. Send the message. Like we said.”, Harry says this quietly, a murmured reminder almost.  
“I’m not sure I would.”

Sadness fills Harry’s gazed when he looks at him. For an instant only, before he takes in a breath and leans in to press his lips on his, gently. 

“Go back to sleep.”

_____________________

Chakotay wakes up to the smell of toast. He walks to the kitchen after having tightened a red robe around him. 

Harry is already at his desk studying a code. 

“Left you some toast.”, he says loud enough so Chakotay could hear  
“Thanks.”

He eats alone for a moment, looking at some messages and reading some articles on his PADD before he decides to move to the living room to drink his coffee. 

“You know, those dreams…” he says after a while.  
“Hmm?”, Harry answers, visibly quite concentrated on something else.  
“I realized why I have been having them. I would really lose you if we found Voyager.”

“When” had become “if” a year or two ago after Starfleet had decided to abandon the search and they had to take it on by their own means, in their modest apartment, with small equipment they had more or less stolen from Starfleet facilities. 

Harry turns around in his chair. Crosses his arms to look at him.

“I wouldn’t be dead. I would be there.”  
“I know. But this… We would never have…”  
“Who knows?”

This little smile of his. Deadly. Sometimes Chakotay wondered if they weren’t together simply because it was only them in this place and because no one else understood. But then he remembered how his little smile made him feel back when all of this would have seemed insane, on a normal day aboard the ship. But also, they’d been on Earth two years before the idea even brushed his mind. It was only the mission for a long time. Only this and nothing else. Intimacy came slowly, strangely, on the nights where it was too much to bear, to stop the thoughts, keep on going. But it still was a three-way marriage, him, Harry, the mission. 

“Ok fine I’ve never told you this but I will, it will make you laugh.”, Harry smiles.  
“What?”, Chakotay chuckles.  
“One evening Tom and I were very drunk and we started making a list of the top 10 hottest people on the crew.”, he had gotten up from his chair to come and sit near him on the sofa. “I ranked you number one and he teased me about it for weeks afterwards. Wouldn’t shut up.”

They both laugh and Chakotay feels better instantly. It was that for him, their relationship through all this, their friendship, their love: a ray of light. 

“Who was number two?” he asks after a while.  
“Neelix.” 

And as they both start laughing again, Harry feels he needs to add :

“I did specify I was drunk.”  
“Do you think growing whiskers would suit me?”

They burst out into laughter again. Chakotay has a little sideways smile. He was never really the one for stupid jokes but after all these years Harry had rubbed off on him. He even made puns, from time to time, bad ones according to his partner but he found them good. 

He pushed his head to the side so it would rest against Harry’s and held his hands, entangling their arms together.  
It was peaceful. 

Somehow Chakotay was sure that even if all of this ended, they would find a way to each other, in the past. He did not believe things could be meant to be but he did believe love always found a way. 

And even if it did not, there would still be this dimension, suspended in time, this handful of years, nothing but a grain of salt in the fabric of the universe, where he was Harry’s, and Harry was his ; where it smelled like toast in the morning and he kissed his forehead goodnight ; where they strolled in parks hand in hand past barking dogs and laughing children ; where sometimes they lay in bed, empty and sad, holding each other as their last link to the past they once had. A glitch, in a way, a mistake, but oh, a most sweet one.


End file.
